Two Women Professors Share a National Jewish Book Prize

Nancy E. Berg, professor of Hebrew language and literature at Washington University in St. Louis and Naomi Sokoloff, a professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of Washington in Seattle were presented with the National Jewish Book Award in the anthologies and collections category for What We Talk About When We Talk About Hebrew (And What It Means to Americans (University of Washington Press, 2018).

Inau­gu­rat­ed in 1950, the Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award is the longest-run­ning North Amer­i­can awards pro­gram of its kind and is rec­og­nized as the most pres­ti­gious. The awards, presented by the Jewish Book Council, are intend­ed to rec­og­nize authors, and encour­age read­ing, of out­stand­ing Eng­lish-lan­guage books of Jew­ish interest.

Professor Berg joined the faculty at Washington University in 1990 as an instructor. She became a full professor in 2009. Dr. Berg is a graduate of the University of Michigan. She holds a Ph.D. in modern Hebrew and Arabic literatures from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Exile from Exile: Israeli Writers From Iraq (State University of New York Press, 1996).

Professor Sokoloff teaches Hebrew and modern Jewish literature in the department of Near Eastern languages and civilization and the department of comparative literature, cinema and media at the University of Washington. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where she majored in Spanish language and literature. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton University in New Jersey.